The man who dropped Mike Tyson in sparring, how good was he?

Amateur star. Famously tagged by Ali as a possible successor. He could box, he could punch, and he had tremendous handspeed. But he didn't like boxing (pushed by his father, I believe) and was always fat. Had a thing for twinkies.

 

I remember he was pretty well out of it at the moment. I remember he lost to Orlin Norris sometime around that time,

 

Yeah, Douglas has a magnificent boxing body when he trained it. Page had better hand-speed and one-punch KO power, although Douglas had very good attritional power. But I agree that Douglas really could have been something.

 

And that is a very good analysis, my only caveat being that Tyson was already degrading from the educated swarmer into the one-one at a time guy he would become when the drugs got full hold of him. He was just lethargic.

But yeah, good call.

 

Page suffered from the same problems a lot of the early 80’s heavyweights did - the money was getting so big even for eliminator type fights they were getting lazy in between fights binging on food, cocaine, and alcohol. Page was thought of to be the next ‘Ali’ it just never panned out. In my opinion Page and Cooney were the biggest ‘what if’s’ of that era both had huge potential that was never realized because of external factors.

 

Someone gave it to me once because I said Page was on the coke. They said his was purely a nutrition and training problem.

 

Shavers knocked Tillis down in the 9th round of their fight.

 

Page is the guy Larry Holmes ducked.